If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

I agree with Ruth and Evie. Also, she might just say "God that hurt". "Bloody hell" or something like that doesn't sound very Hermione-ish. Perhaps you could use something wizard-y like "Oh, Merlin's beard". I remember that in Deathly Hallows Hermionedid say "God" a couple of times but is probably more likely to say "Merlin's beard" or something.

I'm terrible at math and I'm needing some help converting two miles into however many kilometers, seeing as you Brits don't use Miles.... actually, I think it's only us Americans that use that system for measuring distances. So, how far is two miles rounding up to the nearest kilometer?

Actually, we do use miles. We are the only country in Europe that doesn't use KM, I believe. We're supposed to use km, but we still measure the speed of cars in mph, we still say "about two miles away" and on most road signs it still says miles, but the government's trying to change them all into km.

We don't tend to refer to common medications by their brand names. We'd just call them paracetamol, aspirin or ibuprofen, depending on which we were taking.

~Hannah

I'd have to disagree; it depends on the medication.

If you know what you're talking about, you may use brand names, particularly if there are additional elements to the main drug you're after.

If you walked into a pharmacy and asked for some ibuprofen, you have about a dozen different brands, some of which aren't entirely ibuprofen in the sense of the actual drug, they may just contain ibuprofen, but while most people will call it ibuprofen, common brands are Ibuleve and Calprofen.

What about a sort of sleeping pill? Would you just call it a sleeping pill?

I think that depends on the type of sleeping pill - whether it's a benzodiazepine, barbiturate or other thing, and why they're using it. Some people will try something like Nytol first if they're having problems sleeping, otherwise it's off to a GP to try and get something prescribed. In that case you get whatever is on your prescription, and would largely be termed sleeping pills, again though it would depend on the situation and whether there was a need to call the pill by brand name or not (if there are a couple of different types involved and such).

Yes, of course you'd use brand names (or even better, the pharmaceutical names) with more complex or unusual medications, but since I knew that both of the brands Claire mentioned were standard, over-the-counter pain-relievers, I went with the equivalent over here which is the generic name. Yes, there are branded versions, but no brand monopoly exists, so most people use the generic name as a rule.

but while most people will call it ibuprofen, common brands are Ibuleve and Calprofen.

Neither Ibuleve nor Calprofen are straight ibuprofen tablets though - the former is a pain-relief gel, and the latter is the ibuprofen equivalent of Calpol, specifically designed for infants.

Same with sleeping tablets, in a medical or pharmaceutical setting, you'd be more specific - a prescription would be for a specific drug - but in an everyday conversation, you'd say someone was on sleeping tablets, because 90% of the population wouldn't have a clue what benzodiazepine is. A couple of the more widely known sedatives (like Valium) might be referenced more widely by name, but for most contexts likely to come up in a story, sleeping tablet/pill would be fine.